Driving Lights

My wife's biggest concern about me riding is the safety aspect - namely that others can't necessarily see (or register that they're seeing) me on the bike. I wear a bright yellow jacket, and add a reflective vest at night, but that's just not quite enough. After setting up my auxiliary power circuit (http://k7jto.blogspot.com/2016/09/auxiliary-power-mod.html), I decided to tackle driving lights.

I'm not a cheapskate, but I don't like to spend money where it's not needed. So while my first thought was to spring for a set of Denali driving lights (north of $200), I decided to give something more affordable a try, first. Enter the Lylla headlamp: $26 on Amazon.com. The lamp ships with a switch (which I've set aside and saved for another project) and two LED lamps. A few days after I ordered, the lamps arrived. They were, well, larger than I expected!

As always, the first challenge was where to install the lamps. They ship with a bracket, but the default configuration requires the bracket be mounted to a round bar which is perpendicular to the direction of travel. It meant I couldn't use the engine guards, and the generous fairing on the Strom also meant I couldn't use the handlebars. Eventually I realized the fender bolt would be perfect:

With the destination selected, the next step was to slightly modify the bracket--the shoulder on the fender bolt is a tiny bit larger than the hole at the base of the light frame:

The benefit of cheap Chinese metal is that it files quickly.

Once I modified the base of the bracket, it was simple to get installed:

With the frame mounted, it was a simple matter of installing the light and closing up the frame:

 Finally, I wired up everything to a power lead I pulled up from the fuse block in the back, and presto - there was light!